How Biggie Smalls paid tribute to a novelty hit: “Well I’ll tell ya pilgrim”
The first single from Biggie Smalls‘ debut album, Ready to Die, was one of the biggest of his career. Produced by Trackmasters’ Poke and Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, 1994’s ‘Juicy’ is an undeniable classic that reached 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has been certified six times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
The song samples Mtume’s 1983 song ‘Juicy Fruit’ and pays tribute to a song released 10 years prior. In the first verse, the Brooklyn rapper mentions a novelty rap song called ‘Rappin’ Duke’, which standup comedian Shawn Brown released in 1984. He rapped as a parody of American actor John Wayne, whose nickname was Duke.
Biggie raps in his lyrics, “Way back, when I had the red and black lumberjack/ With the hat to match/ Remember Rappin’ Duke? Duh-ha, duh-ha/ You never thought that hip-hop would take it this far.”
‘Rappin’ Duke’ was a sign of the times in the ’80s, with many people thinking hip-hop was a gimmick. Biggie’s bars are a subtle nod at how wrong they were. Brown raps in the song, “So you think you’re bad with your rap/ Well, I’ll tell ya, pilgrim, I started the crap/ When you were in diapers and wetting the sheets/ I was at the Ponderosa rapping to the beat.”
Over the years, there’s been some contention about the origins of ‘Juicy‘. Pete Rock once claimed that he made the song’s original version, which was turned into the hit single we know and love today. “I did the original version, didn’t get credit for it,” he told Wax Poetic. “They came to my house, heard the beat going on the drum machine, it’s the same story.
“You come downstairs at my crib, you hear music. He heard that shit and the next thing you know it comes out. They had me do a remix, but I tell people, and I will fight it to the end, that I did the original version of that. I’m not mad at anybody, I just want the correct credit.
However, Poke claims that wasn’t the case. “This goes back to the whole block party thing,” he said to Complex. “Puff said, ‘Yo, ‘Juicy Fruit’ is a hot record to jack.’ OK. I went home, we put the shit together, came back to the studio, Biggie rhymed, and that was it. That’s the whole story.
“I don’t know where Pete Rock came from [saying he did the original version]. Maybe Puff tried to get Pete to do it, and maybe it didn’t come out the way he meant it. That could have happened prior to it coming for us to do. But that’s really what it was.”
‘Juicy’ is up there with Biggie’s most successful releases, alongside records like ‘Big Poppa‘, ‘Hypnotize’, and ‘Mo Money My Problems’. It was the song that established him in a career cut short by a drive-by shooting that left him dead in 1997 at the age of 24. As a result of songs like ‘Juicy’, his legacy lives on.